Suidobashi Heavy Industry

Suidobashi Heavy Industry Kuratas mech robot a hoax / fake?

We here at Candid Innovations really enjoyed the amusing Kuratas robot video circling the net recently – apparently a company called Suidobashi Heavy Industry has developed an actual, life-sized and functional mech robot.

But is the video real or fake? We think it’s highly likely this is a clever bit of PR for something else. Why do we think that? Well apart from the crazy over the top but amusing elements of the video like smiling to fire the gun – the suidobashijuko.jp domain was actually registered by a company called Kaibutsu Inc last year – Kaibutsu Inc are a Japanese PR company. A little suspicious!

The Kuratas robot was ‘unveiled’ at the Tokyo Wonder Festival. Again highly suspicious, the Tokyo Wonder festival is a festival where exhibitors display and sell toys modelled on popular anime and mecha characters. It also usually showcases future releases by major toy companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Festival.

We think it’s more likely there is a Mech based computer game / toy being released soon, and that Suidobashi Heavy Industry is part of the plot. Great marketing idea if true.

Whether real or fake, it is certainly a well crafted viral video.

Speaking of viral videos, did we mention we’d hidden the secret location of £2000 worth of buried gold in a free iPhone concert finding app called The Grapevine? Shhh, don’t tell anyone!